Horace Greeley (3 February 1811 – 29 November 1872) was an American author and statesman who was the founder and editor of the New-York Tribune and a member of the US House of Representatives (W-NY 6) from 4 December 1848 to 3 March 1849 (succeeding David S. Jackson and preceding James Brooks). A highly influential Whig and Republican newspaper editor and journalist, he named the "Republican Party" in 1854. However, he came to oppose President Ulysses S. Grant and ran for President as the Liberal Republican Party candidate in 1872. He died just a month after his defeat for the presidency.
Biography[]
Early career[]
Horace Greeley was born in Amherst, New Hampshire in 1811, and he developed Asperger's syndrome as a child due to being unable to breathe for the first twenty minutes of his life. He was the son of poor farmers of English and Scots-Irish descent, but he was a brilliant student and became an apprentice printer at the age of 15. He moved town to town seeking newspaper employment and finally found a job at the Erie Gazette in Erie, Pennsylvania, becoming a Unitarian. In 1831, he headed to New York City to seek his fortune, and he set up a print shop a year later. On 22 March 1834, he printed the first issue of The New-Yorker, but it was destroyed by the Panic of 1837. In 1834, he published the campaign newssheet of the Whigs in New York, and, in his paper, he urged the urban poor, young men, and immigrants to head to the American West. In 1840, he became the publisher of the Whig periodical Log Cabin and helped William Henry Harrison win that year's presidential election. With a viewership of 80,000 readers, Greeley founded the New-York Tribune, and he went from publishing four pages consisting of a single folded sheet to becoming the owner of the country's most influential Whig newspaper at the end of 1841.
Rise to fame[]
Clay opposed the expansion of slavery and the annexation of Texas and supported Henry Clay's American System and utopian socialism (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were hired as foreign correspondents in 1851), and, after gaining popularity among the Irish Catholics of New York by proclaiming his support for the Irish nationalist movement, he was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1848, serving until 1849. He introduced legislation for the Homestead Act, advocated for the abolition of flogging and alcohol in the US Navy, to change the name of the United States to "Columbia", to abolish slavery in Washington DC, and to increase tariffs, but he only gained notoriety during his term in the House. Nevertheless, his paper had become highly-successful nationwide. In 1848, he reluctantly endorsed Whig presidential candidate Zachary Taylor over Free Soil Party candidate Martin Van Buren, and, while he opposed the Compromise of 1850, he supported Whig candidate Winfield Scott in 1852. In 1853, as the Whigs were divided over the slavery issue, Greeley declared that his newspaper was now nonpartisan.
Founding the Republican Party[]
Greeley in 1862
After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Greeley helped to found the Republican Party, even coining its name. During the 1860 Republican National Convention, he initially backed the abolitionist Missouri congressman Edward Bates for the nomination, seeing him as a man who could win the North and make inroads in the American South; he thought that Abraham Lincoln would make a good vice-president. Later, however, he secretly campaigned for Lincoln, convincing delegates that a candidate such as William Seward could not win states such as Pennsylvania, while Lincoln could. When Lincoln won the nomination, Seward blamed Greeley, and the two were rivals for years to come.
American Civil War[]
Greeley in July 1863
While Greeley initially supported the peaceful separation of the Confederacy following Lincoln's election, as he believed that there was a revolutionary right to secede. However, after the Battle of Fort Sumter in April 1861, he praised the start of the American Civil War and the opportunity to militarily subdue the South, and he criticized President Lincoln for not using force sooner. He suffered a nervous breakdown after the First Battle of Bull Run, but he recovered after spending two weeks at his Chappaqua farm. He returned to backing Lincoln and even Secretary of State Seward, his old rival. Nonetheless, he was still a firm supporter of abolition and pressured Lincoln to emancipate the African-American slaves, and he hailed the Emancipation Proclamation as a "great boon of freedom". He cheered in response to the Battle of Gettysburg and supported conscription to recruit more soldiers for the Union war effort, but he called for a mediated settlement with the Confederacy through France. In 1864, he opposed Lincoln's renomination, only to support him following the Siege of Atlanta's successful conclusion. At the end of the war, he urged magnanimity towards the Confederate leaders rather than marking martyrs out of them, but, after Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, Greeley supported harsh measures against the Confederate leadership.
Postwar politics[]
Greeley was critical of President Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction policies after the war, as he allowed for states to be readmitted without protecting freedmen's rights. Greeley lost in an 1866 run for the US House of Representatives, and, in the 1867 US Senate primary, he lost to Roscoe Conkling. He strongly supported Johnson's impeachment in 1868 and backed Ulysses S. Grant's presidential candidacy, but he declined Grant's offer of the office of Minister to the Dominican Republic in 1870. In 1872, after Carl Schurz formed the Liberal Republican Party in opposition to President Grant and corruption and support for civil service reform, lower taxes, and land reform, Greeley was chosen as the party's presidential nominee with Missouri governor Benjamin Gratz Brown as his running mate. The Democrats cross-nominated Greeley rather than split the anti-Grant vote, and they also supported civil rights for freedmen. Greeley campaigned on intersectional reconciliation, a return to normality, and ending the military occupation of the South, and he was initially the frontrunner. However, the Republicans accused him of being pro-Confederate, and Greeley broke off campaigning after his wife died five days before the election. He lost the election with 66 electoral votes to Grant's 286, and he died exactly a month later.